U.S. Pat. No. 6,263,890 shows a cleaning device for a dry shaver. The device is formed with a basin for accommodating therein a shaver head of the shaver, and a tank containing a volume of a cleaning liquid and communicating with the basin through a liquid supply channel. A pump is disposed in the liquid supply channel in order to supply the liquid from the tank into the basin for cleaning the shaver head, i.e., cutters and the associated parts. The tank is disposed immediately below the basin for collecting the liquid from the basin by gravity feed. As the tank is required to hold a large volume of the liquid for supplying it to the basin in an amount enough for cleaning the shaver head, the tank is inherently made bulky and therefore adds an extra height to the cleaning device, which detracts from design flexibility.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,711,328 suggests another cleaning device in which the pump is disposed between the basin and the tank in order to feed the liquid back into the tank from the basin and to supply the liquid from the tank to the basin. The tank is itself made as a hermetically sealed container to accumulate the liquid from the basin. When the basin is empty or becomes exhausted, an outside air is introduced into a fluid channel leading from the basin to the tank and is collected also in the tank. The air is accumulated in the tank to give an increased air pressure by which the liquid in the tank is forced to expel into the basin. Thus, the liquid can be constantly circulated between the basin and the tank. With this scheme, however, it is difficult or even impracticable to make the basin completely empty, i.e., to collect the entire liquid from the basin into the tank. That is, as the basin becomes nearly empty, the air is fed into the tank to increase the air pressure which, in turn, expels the liquid out of the tank into the tank. Thus, the basin is always filled with the liquid and could not be totally exhausted by the pump. Consequently, the liquid could not be wholly recovered into the tank and suffers from unintended evaporation until a later cleaning operation.